Top Stories for Friday, March 27th, 2015:

Seats that filled the Doa Ana County Commission Chamber Tuesday, March 24, empty as residents queue up to give their thoughts about the board’s proposal to raise gross receipts tax by three-eighths of a percent. The commission could have gone for no increase, or a more modest increase, but a majority of commissioners chose the full increase to improve salaries in the sheriff, detention center and roads departments, as well as a number of other services and expenditures.

In a 4-1 vote, the Doña Ana County Commission passed a threeeighths of a percent increase in the gross receipts (GRT) tax Tuesday, March 24, to pay for raising salaries in the sheriff’s department, detention center and roads department, as well as for improved radio communications for sheriff deputies, vehicle replacements, capital improvements for economic development and public safety, money to start up a modest countywide public...

Experienced Doña Ana County lawmakers are describing the 60-day session that ended Saturday, March 21, as exhausting and unproductive as gridlock restricted the number of bills passed and thwarted capital outlay funding from projects ranging from roads and senior centers to school and higher education improvements.

Senate President ProTempore Mary Kay Papen said it was the worst session in her 15 years in the Legislature.

Despite falling to No. 2 seed Kansas in the second round of the 2015 NCAA basketball tournament, New Mexico State University men’s basketball coach Marvin Menzies and his team are already in the process of preparing for next season.

With the departure of four seniors, Menzies will look to his younger players to step up and guide the team and propel them through the tough stretches.

The Las Cruces Community Theatre’s One-Act Play Festival continues for three more performances, at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday, March 27-28, and 2 p.m. Sunday, March 29.

The One-Act Play Festival not only serves to expose a wider theater-going audience to the art of short-form storytelling, a departure from the Las Cruces Community Theatre’s regular performance series and its roster of multiple- act plays, but also helps to showcase the...